


One One Thousand

by phoenixdna



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, First Time, Gay Bar, Hand Jobs, M/M, Oral Sex, Past Brainwashing, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Recovered Memories, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2020-07-12 12:41:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19946338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixdna/pseuds/phoenixdna
Summary: Following the events of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier", Bucky is left to fill in some gaps. He slowly pieces together who he is, what he's done, and the life (and people) he left behind.





	1. Re-Entry

Water in his eyes. Water in his lungs. Water soaking into his clothes. The Winter Soldier tore at the freezing, murky water, searching. His hand hit something solid, something solid and warm. He grabbed a hold. Pulled.

The Soldier dragged the man’s body out of the water and dropped him on the bank. The man was unconscious, but Bucky heard a cough.

_Bucky? Who the hell is Bucky?_

Two hands hit Bucky’s face – one warm and water-wrinkled, the other metal. The hands searched his hair, stringy and dirt-clotted. Bucky knelt at the edge of the river and looked at himself in the gunmetal water. Himself. What an odd word. He barely recognized the man staring back.

From behind him, he heard the man stir. Steve rolled over and coughed, splattering the mud beside him. By the time he sat up, Bucky was gone.

This part felt familiar, Bucky thought. The running away. He looked over his shoulder at Steve, who was getting to wobbly legs on the shore. And that was the difference.

The Winter Soldier didn’t look back.

***

The next few days came to Bucky in stutters. He seemed to leave his body for hours on end, go somewhere else, become someone else. The Soldier.

Still, he and the soldier seemed to have a common goal, which was getting the target off of his back. To do that, he had to leave DC. Bucky would lose a few hours and come back to himself, taking account of what was different. He was marginally cleaner. He had different clothes. He had a wallet. His lip was split and swollen, but he wasn’t hungry anymore. That sort of thing.

The Soldier kept him moving. But, in his moments of lucidity, Bucky began to piece together the shrapnel of his life he’d found scattered to the wind. He was all over the news, which was helpful and harmful all at once. One newspaper had decided to run an article. _Who is Bucky Barnes?_

_James Buchanan Barnes (“Bucky”) was born in… disappeared in… presumed dead. Rose to this rank. Captured. Et cetera._

What interested Bucky most, though, were not the statistics. He wanted to know who he was, beyond an abused husk and an apparent mass murderer.

_Best friends with Steve Rogers since childhood…_

Now, there was something he could use. There was a picture of him, him with this “Steve Rogers” – the man from the river. Steve Rogers, the famous Captain America. Looking at the picture made his head hurt. It made his thoughts reach the brink of boiling over. That would be a problem for another time. For now, he taped the article in a notebook.

He headed toward the sea.

***

It was only in the belly of a cargo ship, riding the surf out of Chesapeake Bay, that Bucky felt himself return to his body. Waves of nausea rolled around in his stomach. Despite the seasick fog, he felt clearer than he had in years.

Bucky carefully opened his pack, blinking hard and shaking his head at his left hand. Metal hand, metal arm – the pseudo-flesh cold and unyielding. He remembered a fall, the plummeting in his stomach not unlike jarring awake from a dream. A dream or a nightmare. If only.

The bag contained very little. A couple of wallets, neither his, but both with cash and credit cards. A flashlight, protein bars, a water bottle, a thin sleeping bag. A bottle of Ibuprofen. A burner cell phone with no service and not a single number in it. A toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, and a pack of underwear still in the packaging.

Tucked into the very bottom, under a change of clothes, was a gun. He didn’t even want to look at it, didn’t want to acknowledge how well he knew the thing. He pulled it out just long enough to check that he’d left the safety on.

And, in the pocket of his sweater, he found a notebook. It seemed solid, and he wondered why, of all things, he had prioritized getting a nice notebook. He pulled the elastic off the already-scratched cover and went to open it. He froze.

Sometimes it was better not to know. For years, his memory had been wiped every time he came back from a mission. He had knowledge, yes, but no memories, not from his life before. Even the memories of his missions were fractured, knitted together with long stretches of nothing at all. He thought, once he woke up, that he’d be hungry to know, to capitalize on his newfound freedom by remembering every minute, every second. Now he wasn’t so sure, not quite ready to face the congregation of skeletons in his closet.

He was a boat adrift. Better to be adrift than risk hitting a hostile shore. Bucky wanted to go home. He shivered. He didn’t know where home was anymore, whether it had ever existed. He popped a couple Ibuprofen and slipped into the sleeping bag. The nausea was gone. The boat rocked him to sleep.

***

Bucky snapped awake from a dreamless sleep. All around him the boat groaned, metal joists wailing. He thought he heard thunder, but it may have been the rumble of the engines. He searched frantically for the thought that had scattered as soon as he woke. _Home._ Ah, yes, home. He knew where home was.

He’d left it coughing up water on the shores of the Potomac.


	2. Discrete Integration

The next few weeks felt alien and familiar. 

The Winter Soldier had spent what felt like decades on the lam. Bucky, not so much. But Bucky and the Winter Soldier were slowly integrating, becoming what felt like one person. Bucky would be lying if he said that didn’t terrify him. He liked to think he kept the Soldier on a leash, that he only pulled out his assassin alter-ego when he needed to.

But Bucky’s mind had been partitioned, fractured into one thousand different pieces. Each piece was put into a box, carefully labeled, and sequestered to one side. Everything he needed to survive – like speaking Romanian, or finding safe houses, or hacking computers – all of that was confined to the Soldier’s side. Everything he needed to live – memories of his childhood, of home, of the war – those were sitting on Bucky’s side.

Sometimes, the sides overlapped. There was a network of bridges between them, bridges that were poorly defined and difficult to find. Those bridges tended to trigger an abrupt switch from one side to another. He was picking a lock, and all of a sudden, he was fifteen in Brooklyn. He spilled a bottle of wine, looked at his hands, and spent the next half-hour trying to wash the blood off.

Steve was one of these bridges, the most tenuous and unstable. He avoided it altogether.

Bucky got by in the first few months by taking odd jobs. He squatted in vacant apartments at night. During the day, he cleaned pastures on farms, fixed cars, cleaned office buildings. There seemed to be no end of other people’s dirty work to do, but he was grateful for it. It gave him a little money each time, which he sewed into the seam of his backpack.

Bucky was saving for an apartment. He figured that, if he was ever going to figure out who he was, he needed to have a base of operations. He had his eye on a few. They were all in sketchy neighbourhoods in Bucharest. Most of their landlords were men he’d gotten out of tight spots. They owed him a favour, and were willing to look the other way about his lack of papers.

One night, after last call, Bucky was mopping the floor of a dive bar. It was a real hole in the wall, but the mopping was calm, almost meditative. He turned on the television to keep him company, take his mind off the whole ordeal. The only station on at that hour of the night was a twenty-four-hour news station. The newscasters droned on, and, with a barely-working knowledge of Romanian, Bucky was able to drown them out.

The sound of a voice speaking English ripped him out of his trance. He looked up at the TV. It was an American newscaster, interviewing the likes of Tony Stark. Apparently, Stark had made some kind of murder robot that was terrorizing the city. Bucky rolled his eyes. The name Stark tugged unpleasant strings in his mind. He could have pulled them, if he wanted to. But mostly he just wanted to finish mopping for the night.

Then another man appeared on screen. Bucky recognized him instantly, even uniformed and covered in battle dust. Hell, especially uniformed and covered in battle dust. It was Steve. Bucky’s metal arm clenched so hard around the mop handle that it splintered in his hand.

Bucky didn’t remember the rest of that night. The next morning, though, when he woke up, he was covered in blood. This was, at this point in his life, only a minor inconvenience to Bucky. He searched his backpack and found a large lump in it. He pulled at the stitches.

Inside was a wad of cash. It was easily double the size it was before he’d blacked out. Suddenly, his blood-crusted clothes made his skin crawl. He tore them off, brought them around the back of the building, and burned them. The smoke stuck and clung. He broke in the back door of a gym and showered, scrubbed until his skin was raw.

He took the cash and brought it to a landlady in the west end of town. He’d helped her scare off some mob bosses who were trying to extort her. When she saw him, she babbled in Romanian and made to hug him. He pushed her off, realizing with a start that this attempted half-hug was the only physical contact he’d had in, well. He didn’t want to think about it.

He gave her first and last month’s rent, plus a hefty damage deposit that she didn’t ask for and he wasn’t going to take back. He unrolled his sleeping bag on the bare mattress and set his notebook of memories on the dusty nightstand. He sat on his sleeping bag and examined his meagre surroundings. Bucky was tired to the bone. The Winter Soldier was too on guard to sleep.


	3. Leaks

With a regular address, Bucky was able to start applying for jobs. He used the rest of his money to buy some forged papers and, after a few weeks of applying, landed a job as the night janitor at a high school.

As the night janitor, he didn’t have to talk to people much. That was just fine, in Bucky’s books. On the odd occasion, a band or basketball practice got out late, and he’d run across students in the hallways. If they tried to talk to him, he shrugged and explained, in broken Romanian, that he didn’t understand. That was enough to dissuade further conversation.

One night he was repairing a water fountain at the end of a long hall. For most of the night, he’d been listening to the faraway notes of the school’s drama club rehearsing a musical. They sounded good, he thought, although he didn’t really know enough about music to judge. He couldn’t carry a tune, and neither could Steve.

That thought came unbidden, hurtling out of the dark. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head hard, trying to clear out his brain. He heard a pop and then a loud his. He opened his eyes to see that the makeshift repair on the water fountain had sprung a leak, and it was sputtering water all over the floor. He sighed and knelt to fix it, half-grateful for the distraction.

From underneath the water fountain, he heard the drama club finish up for the night. They poured out of the auditorium, laughing and chattering. From there, he heard and felt lockers start to open and slam. He finished the repair and slid out from under the fountain. A group of teens turned, startled, but they went back to chatting when they saw it was just the janitor. Bucky turned to clean the water on the floor.

Then he heard a shriek. He looked up. Two girls were running at each other, one just having appeared in the hall. They hugged each other tight and then kissed.

Kissed. Bucky felt his mouth go dry and a headache start to form, though he wasn’t sure why. The whole group of students turned and walked away, the girls holding hands, fingers entwined. As they left, he tried to copy everything about them into his brain, to figure out what had unnerved him so much.

Bucky woke up in the middle of the night. He didn’t scream anymore, from the dreams. That would give away his position. He hyperventilated, now. That’s what he did, bolting awake in his bed, thinking that’s not allowed not okay they’re going to find you and hurt you. These thoughts flashed with images in his head. They weren’t the usual pictures, though. Instead of the repressed thoughts of violence and bloodshed, this was a picture of the two girls from school. Them, and then Steve.

He didn’t want to go to sleep, after that. He made himself coffee and watched the sun rise from his fire escape. After dawn, he set out for the library.

***

The librarians were used to Bucky by now. The library was his main base of operations for research about his past life. The books themselves were not useful, mostly because they were in Romanian. That divide was growing weaker, but Bucky was still not as proficient as the Soldier.  
Instead, he set up at one of the library’s public computers. He sat in front of the old, buzzing tube monitors for hours. The librarians often looked the other way. Bucky came in early in the morning, or late at night, when the library wasn’t busy. He didn’t cause trouble, he was polite, and he’d helped them with that bat situation a while back. So they didn’t impose their usual hour-long limit on computer use. T

Bucky booted up the computer and wracked his brain as it loaded. He was trying to remember his dream from last night. He couldn’t remember the dream at all, only the feeling upon waking. Terror – but not just terror. It was a shame so deeply ingrained it threatened to swallow him whole. The shame, he noted, was different from the heavy guilt he felt for the things he’d done as the soldier. This was different. It hadn’t been brainwashed into him. And, if it involved Steve, he’d wager that it was from his past life.

He took a deep breath and opened the search bar. He couldn’t search Steve – that was still too much – so he focused on the girls from last night. He tried to think of their similarities, any way he could link them together besides the obvious. Then he remembered: they had both been wearing rainbows. One had a pin in her lapel and the other had a patch on her backpack.

He punched rainbow pin into the search bar. The first few results just had rainbows, some with an acronym – LGBT – that he didn’t recognize. He searched LGBT, and clicked on the Wikipedia article that popped up. He spent an hour reading the article, back to front, over and over. All the while, memories built up in the back of his mind, threatening to destroy the carefully-constructed dam they were hidden behind.

When he felt he’d safely boxed the memories away, he began clicking on links. He eventually stumbled across a page intitled LGBT culture in New York City. Against his better judgement, he clicked on it.

There was his old apartment.

With that, his head began to drown in the memories he’d forced back. His first kiss, after a school dance. His real first kiss, heart-pounding and terrified on his fire escape, age twenty. The hairs of the other boy’s beard scratching his cheek. The long nights and whispered half-truths in bars that ended with his clothes on another man’s floor.

The enlistment. The fear of dishonourable discharge. The nights at training camp barracks, mouths fused together to make sure that they were silent, silent, silent. The night before he shipped out. It thundered. There was a hole in his tent where the rain came though. There was water falling on the keyboard. There were tears falling on the keyboard.

Bucky bolted from the computer and went home, where he patched every single leak in his roof.


	4. One One Thousand

Bucky got caught in a rainstorm, one day, coming back from the market. It was one of the sudden ones, the ones that came out of nowhere. As the first drops of water hit the pavement and evaporated, they released a smell that tugged at Bucky’s memory. He willed it away and picked up running, bolting through the drizzle and downpour, trying to get into his apartment before the full force of the memory and the storm hit.

He made it just in time, his brass key rattling in his door, distantly aware of wrenching it open and slamming it behind him. Sitting on his bare bed. Gone.

***

Bucky remembered the summer.

This was before they were teenagers, before they were expected to work paper routes and make their way in the world. In summer, Steve and Bucky were loosed on the streets of Brooklyn, missing half of their teeth and ready to take on the world.

That particular week, Steve’s mother was out of town, visiting her sister. It wasn’t uncommon for Bucky to stay with Steve, and vice-versa. Bucky’s parents had been wary at first. What if Steve got sick while she was away? What would they do? But Steve’s mother reassured them that summer was better. Steve didn’t suffer the same as in the winter.

And, if he did get sick, there wasn’t much to be done.

So Steve started staying with Bucky. Steve had just turned nine earlier that summer. Bucky was ten. August was ending, the humming heat of the summer winding down into autumn.

Steve and Bucky were determined to make it last. They wandered around New York City causing trouble. They went to the beach and the pier, feeding seagulls stale bread until they swooped at passers-by and chased them away. They rode the subway back and forth, savoring the machine-oil smell and the rattle of the cars on the rails. They went to Central Park and sat in the grass. They talked. Steve brought along a stub of a pencil and a notepad and drew things. Bucky watched people.

As he remembered these things, Bucky struggled. His memories had a distant, washed-out quality. They were almost black and white in his mind. Photos didn’t help, as they were all in black and white as well.

He was sifting through memories of that week when something struck him. It was him and Steve, sitting in New York Harbor, watching ships go out to sea. They’d just bought popsicles off of a street vendor. They were silent for a while.

“Where do you think they’re going?” Steve asked, and Bucky turned to him to answer.

Steve had a grape popsicle. Bucky ate his own quickly. Steve dawdled, and had paid the price. Bright purple juice dripped down his chin, with a few spots staining his shirt.

At that, the colour sprang back into Bucky’s memories. Steve’s golden hair and blue eyes, his faded grey shirt, the purple popsicle juice. And with the colour the rest of the memory came rushing back like a boat springing a leak.

“Steve, your shirt!” Bucky said. Steve’s attention snapped to his popsicle and then his shirt.

“Oh, no,” Steve said, “That’s not good.”

“My mom knows how to get stuff out of shirts,” Bucky reassured. Then he froze. “Oh, no. My mom. What time is it?”

Steve shrugged and looked back at his ruined shirt, shoving the remains of his popsicle into his mouth. Bucky ran a bit of the way back up the pier and asked the ice cream vendor if he had the time. Steve saw Bucky running wildly back to where he was sitting, waving his arms.

“My mom’s going to kill me,” Steve complained.

“Not if my mom kills us first!” Bucky cried, “We’re late for dinner!”

It wasn’t far to Bucky’s house. Still, just on instinct, Bucky took off sprinting. When they showed up at Bucky’s door they were both out of breath and grinning ear to ear. Bucky’s mother answered the door. The boys expected some admonishment for being late. Instead, Bucky’s mother smiled.

“Steve, you’ve got something purple on your nose,” she said, licking her thumb and wiping the popsicle juice off.

They had dinner that night and then went straight to Bucky’s room. They raided the living room for the couch cushions and Steve arranged them on the floor. They talked and goofed around until Bucky’s mom told them to brush their teeth and turn out the light. Even then, it took three warnings for them to finally go to sleep.

***

Bucky woke up in the night with the feeling that something was off. He looked down at Steve. Steve was awake.

“Are you okay?” Bucky asked, and Steve went to reply, but was cut off my a low rumble. The temperature in the room, which had been hot and stuffy, seemed to drop in a matter of seconds. Bucky ran to the open window just in time to watch lightning arc across the sky over the nearby buildings. The rain had started, and the asphalt below was steaming, the smell of it permeating the memory.

“Thunderstorm,” he said. He closed the window and sat down on the couch cushions next to Steve.

“Are you scared of thunder?” Bucky asked Steve. Even in the relative gloom, Bucky knew Steve was smiling.

“No, Buck, I’m-”

“Not scared of anything. Right.” Bucky laid back and, for a few minutes, the two boys watched the storm roll in, listening to the thunder.

Steve broke the drone of the storm sounds. “My mom says you can figure out how far away the storm is. You just count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder.”

“Everyone knows that,” Bucky said, “You count them and every three seconds is a mile.”

“I thought it was five seconds,” Steve said.

“Maybe,” Bucky said. At the next flash, the boys started counting.

“One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand...”

They kept up their counting until it seemed like the storm was right above them.

All of a sudden they saw the brightest flash ever, accompanied by a bang and rumble that shook the steel bones of their building. Just out of reflex, Steve grabbed Bucky’s hand.

“That was right over us,” Steve said breathlessly. Bucky laughed.

“No kidding,” he said.

It took another few moments for Steve to realize what he’d done. He started to withdraw his hand from Bucky’s.

“It’s okay,” Bucky said quickly, “You can keep your hand there. If you want, I mean.”

“Really?” Steve asked, “You don’t mind?”

“Course not, Stevie,” Bucky said. The hand in his was comforting.

The boys laid in silence until Steve fell asleep. Bucky contemplated staying right there next to him. But what would his mother think, if she woke them up in the morning? He withdrew his hand carefully and climbed back into bed, shivering in the chill that had come in the wake of the storm.

Bucky tried to get back to sleep, but couldn’t. He had thoughts roiling in his brain. About Steve, about holding hands and sharing beds. About how sad he was that they were too old and couldn’t anymore. About the space between the thunder and the lightning, the silence, like waiting for someone to hang up the phone.

He went to count sheep to fall asleep. He counted seconds instead, thinking of a hand in his, a flash of light, one one thousand.

That was how the summer died.


	5. Between the Lines and Alleyways

One of the things Bucky did with his free time was watch people.

At first it was out of paranoia. He was hypervigilant, always waiting for someone to hurt him, attack him, try to reacquire him. Those feelings faded. They didn’t go away completely. But, once he was able to dial down the fear, he was able to watch people with curiosity.

He’d done it when he was younger, too. Just observed people, wondering about their lives. Now he had a more important goal in mind. He was gathering information about the world. Sure, there were significant things that he knew about, major historical events. But the nuance of modern times was in the people, not in the history books.

One day he was watching people while sitting on the library steps. A particular pair caught his eye. It was two men, holding hands. They stopped by the library and kissed each other. One walked into the library and the other, away down the sidewalk.

They seemed so unafraid, he thought. He felt a memory coming on. He pushed it down hard and took off like a shot. The librarian looked startled before realizing it was him. The librarians had gotten used to his odd behaviour.

He ran home, shoving the memory down. Just a few more blocks and he was home. He tumbled into his almost-bare bed and took a deep breath.

The memory had gone quiet while he was running. He probed the thought with his mind. And, just like that, the memory came to life.

***

“Hey! Get out of here!” Bucky shouted. The two men at the end of the alley turned. Bucky could see Steve cornered behind them, bruised, chest heaving. Oh, Steve. This was always how it went.

“Oh?” one of the men said, turning to Steve, “This your boyfriend?” Steve didn’t say anything. Bucky felt his heart drop and anger and fear coursed through his body.

“I said, get out of here,” he repeated, “Leave him alone.”

Steve’s two assailants sized Bucky up. He made a much more imposing figure than Steve. They looked at each other and sneered.

“Fine,” they said, “Guess we’ll just have to tell everyone this princess over here can’t fight his own fights. Fucking fairy.” One of them spat and they pushed past Bucky and out of the alley. Bucky hated it, but he waited until he was sure that they were gone before running to Steve’s side.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asked. His hand was about to go to the bruise on Steve’s face, but the bullies’ words rang in his mind – fucking fairy – and he stopped himself.

“I’m fine, Bucky,” Steve said. He wheezed, and it turned into a doubled-over cough. Bucky patted his back and he stood.

“What happened?” Bucky asked, as the two walked out of the alley and into the street.

“The usual,” Steve said, wincing, “They cornered me after class. Asked to see what I’d been drawing. I told them it was none of their business. Then they started going on about how all the boys in art school are fags and I probably was one, too. So I told them it’s not okay to say things like that. And then they tried to fight me.”

“Looks like they were doing pretty well,” Bucky said darkly.

“Hey!” Steve objected, giving him a shove, “You didn’t see the whole thing. I was giving them a run for their money.”

“You always do,” Bucky said, smiling. “Why don’t you just tell them you’re not gay?” he asked. Steve was very quiet for a few moments, and Bucky read something into that – though what, he couldn’t say.

“They wouldn’t believe me if I told them,” Steve said, “Besides, if I say not to beat me up because I’m not gay, that just makes them think it’s okay to beat gay people up. And it’s not.” Bucky was taken aback for a moment, but it made sense. It was consistent with everything Steve was. He didn’t think it was okay to hurt anyone. Bucky looked over his shoulder. They were almost home. The street was empty.

“You don’t think there’s anything wrong with being gay?” Bucky asked, his nerves forming a knot in his stomach.

“I don’t know, Bucky,” Steve said, “It’s not hurting anyone, is it?”

“The church would say otherwise,” Bucky quickly countered. Why he was arguing that side, he didn’t know. Steve chuckled.

“The church is wrong about a lot of things. That’s why I stopped going,” Steve said. Bucky had noticed that. Steve stopped going to church after they moved in together, shortly after his mother died. They reached their apartment and Steve unlocked the door while Bucky was lost in thought. Thoughts about Steve: Steve not denying being gay. Steve not thinking being gay was bad. As they shuffled in to their cramped kitchen, Bucky thought about the irony of the whole situation. Because, as far as he knew, Steve wasn’t gay.

Bucky was.

Steve got bothered for it more, though. Skinny, tiny kid. He had never been athletic. He was in art school, for god’s sake. But it was also about how Steve always took the underdog’s side. By all accounts, Steve should have been considered manly. He was braver than anyone Bucky knew. He never backed down from a fight. But it was who and what he was fighting for that bothered people.

For Bucky, it was easy to fly under the radar. He was big, athletic. He looked the part of a straight guy. If anyone gave him shit for it, especially about him and Steve, that got shut down real fast.

If he was being honest, Bucky also put on a show. He went on dates with girls. He blew three dollars at a carnival trying to win a bear for a girl he didn’t even like. Nobody suspected a thing, and he wanted to keep it that way. And, at times, he hated it. Hated that he never expected to settle down with a guy he liked, have a life, have a family, that kind of thing.

For now, though, he’d gotten close enough. He’d known he liked Steve since he was sixteen and Steve started going on dates with girls. He’d been jealous. At first he thought it was just that he was losing time to spend with his best friend. Then the images started to creep in, the daydreams.

Him and Steve, holding hands. Sharing a bed. Laughing together. That felt safe.

Kissing. Not so safe. He’d been stuck at that stage for a while, terrified to go any deeper into this messed-up rabbit hole. But he’d gotten there, eventually, and sometimes he felt like there was no going back.

He met guys at bars, sometimes. He knew where to go. But it was always one-night stands, a light feeling of fear hanging over them like a raincloud.

He never told Steve. Bucky was gay. Steve was not. If Steve found out and was disgusted, he would leave. Even if Steve was fine with it, someone else might find out, and they wouldn’t be. Their landlord might evict them. They couldn’t live together, not with that suspicion hanging over their head.

Sometimes Bucky felt like he was starving for affection, for love. He took what he could get with Steve. Even that sometimes felt like crumbs. He wanted it all. More than wanting it all, though, he was afraid. He told himself, over and over, that crumbs were better than starving. And he didn’t tell Steve.


	6. Closer Calls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some v mild (mostly implied) NSFW in this chapter.

Steve didn’t suspect a thing. Bucky was almost certain. That is, until a week before Bucky shipped out.

Steve was on a date that night, with some girl from school. Bucky was alone in the apartment. There was a lot of shit rolling around in his head – about leaving for the war in a week, about who would take care of Steve while he was gone, about Steve out with some girl, about how he should be happy for Steve. He should be happy.

He needed a drink, but he didn’t want to drink alone. He knew someplace he could go. A lot of his usual bars had been shut down in preparation for the World’s Fair. When it was cancelled, the police lost interest, and some of them had bounced back. He headed to one now.

The bar was blessedly dark, some old record playing. He sat down and ordered a beer. The place was pretty empty – a couple of men sat in the corner, and a few more dotted the bars and the tables. All of Bucky’s usual places had emptied out. It wasn’t just the fair; it was that most of the young men had gone to war already. Bucky sighed, and sipped his beer, and tried not to think about it too much.

“What’s a guy like you doing in a place like this?” Bucky heard. He jumped slightly, turned. There was a man standing beside him. Bucky hadn’t seen him before. He gave him a once-over. He was tall, about Bucky’s age, and pale, with well-kept, dark red hair. Bucky bit his lip.

“Same thing as you, probably,” he said. The man laughed.

“Can I sit?” he asked.

“Go ahead,” Bucky replied. He turned his chair so he was facing the man. He sat down in one smooth motion and ordered a scotch. He turned to Bucky and extended his hand.

“David,” he introduced himself.

“Bucky,” Bucky said back, shaking his hand.

Bucky knew he had to be careful. He was generally good about these things; so was this bar. Every once in a while, some poor straight boy would wander into the bar and find himself far, far out of his depth. The careful courtship remained as a safeguard against that.

“When are you shipping out?” David asked, interrupting Bucky’s thoughts.

“A week,” Bucky replied in surprise, “How did you..?”

“You’ve got that look in your eyes,” David said, “Like you’ve been reading the papers and not liking what you see.”

“I don’t think anyone likes what they see in the papers,” Bucky said, with a rueful grin.

“Fair,” David said, nodding, “But there’s a difference between watching hell from a distance and already having your ticket booked.”

Bucky was growing fond of David very quickly. He thought, maybe, that it was because he was lonely. Maybe a little bit desperate to feel something, anything, before he left.

“You?” Bucky asked.

“Just got back,” David answered, “A couple months ago.”

“Why’d you come back?” Bucky asked. He drained the last of his beer, starting to feel it at the edge of his senses. David frowned, evaluating the situation.

“Discharged,” he replied. Bucky quirked an eyebrow.

“Honorable or dishonorable?” Bucky asked. David looked him up and down one more time, then leaned in and put his hand on Bucky’s knee.

“What do you think?” David whispered in his ear. Bucky swallowed and David leaned back.

“Gotta take a leak,” he said, “Be right back.”

Bucky knew well enough what that meant. He shuffled in his seat. He fiddled with his beer bottle and counted to one hundred in his head. Then he stood up and walked toward the men’s bathroom.  
David was in there alone, smoking a cigarette, leaning against the wall. He caught sight of Bucky and grinned.

“I thought so,” he said.

“You’re awfully confident,” Bucky said, sidling up to him.

“And you’re awfully pretty,” David shot back. He put out his cigarette against the tile wall and tossed it into a trash can. Bucky touched David’s face. A slight end-of-day shadow. He leaned in for a kiss.

David took the lead. He tilted Bucky’s head back and brought the kiss deeper, licking into Bucky’s mouth. Bucky groaned.

“Been a while?” David asked.

“Long enough,” Bucky replied. He pressed David into the wall and continued kissing him, biting his lip and running his open mouth down David’s neck. David breathed laboriously, grabbing Bucky’s hips and pressing them together.

“Oh,” Bucky said.

“Tell me about it,” David answered. Bucky looked David in the eye and started to kneel, hands going to David’s fly.

“No, no,” David said, pulling Bucky back to his feet, “Not like this.”

Bucky frowned. “I thought…”

“No, I... I want to show you a good time. It’s your last night on earth,” David said.

“Last week,” Bucky corrected.

“Close enough,” David laughed, “You’re not gonna get a lot of tenderness over there. One night, that’s all I can give you. But I want to give you that.”

Bucky felt a gentle, warm emotion. God, this was better than what he’d hoped for.

“I live near here,” Bucky said, “Come home with me.”

“You live alone?” David asked.

“Roommate. He’s out,” Bucky explained quickly.

“Alright,” David said.

The men walked out of the bathroom, carefully staggering their departure. They paid their tabs and made their way to Bucky’s apartment.

David was clearly eager to get things underway. They traded kisses in the elevator. Bucky felt giddy, wondering how he’d managed to get drunk off of one beer. He stopped David as they left the elevator.

“Someone might be in the hall,” Bucky said.

“It’s midnight,” David said. Still, he kept his composure all the way down the hall, until he and Bucky stumbled into Bucky’s apartment.

David pressed Bucky into the counter of the dark kitchen and started kissing him again. Bucky put his hands around David’s waist, as though he was holding on for dear life. David started to pull his coat off. Bucky heard a cough and froze, pushing David away. The light in the kitchen came on.

“Bucky?” Steve asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes. David took a step back, clearly a little alarmed.

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky said, “Thought you were out for the night.” A deer in headlights.

“Celia wasn’t feeling well, so she went home. Who’s this?” Steve asked.

“Uh,” Bucky started. He found he’d frozen up completely.

“A friend,” David supplied, “We’re leaving together next week. Bucky was just getting me…”

“Soap,” Bucky said, “He ran out and the store’s closed.”

Steve looked confused. He yawned.

“I’ll just head back to bed. G’night, Bucky,” he said, disappearing into the dark bedroom. Bucky turned to David, who looked disappointed. Not mad, just let down.

“I should go,” David said.

“We could… we could go to your place,” Bucky said, but he knew he was grasping at straws.

“No, no, it’s… I’m fine. Thank you, though.” David walked toward the door. He turned back as he was about to leave.

“Good luck out there,” he said, “I’m sorry.”

And then he was gone.

Bucky walked into the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face and sat on the edge of the tub. He felt empty.


	7. All's Fair (in Love and War)

The night before he shipped out, Bucky wanted to be with Steve. Unfortunately, he’d gotten antsy in the past few days. He was afraid Steve was onto him. In those days, he worried. Should he tell Steve the truth? Should he make some grand gesture? After all, he might leave for the war and never come back. Then Steve would never know.

One of the things Bucky had always admired about Steve was his bravery. As he debated his options, he felt more like a coward than ever.

In the end, he chickened out. He ended up inviting two girls he knew on a double date to the Stark Expo. At least Steve would be there. Crumbs, he reminded himself. Better than nothing.

The expo had some wonderful things, but Bucky was distracted. Steve was, too. He could tell. Bucky was so lost in thought that he didn’t even realize that Steve had slipped away until Bonnie brought it up. Bucky laughed under his breath.

“I think I know where he is,” Bucky said, “I’ll be right back.”

Bucky looked at the map and made his way over to the recruitment tent. Sure enough, Steve was standing outside. There wasn’t a line, but Bucky assumed Steve was getting his story straight. He’d tried it enough times.

“Where do you think you’re going, punk?” Bucky asked. Steve whipped around and made a face, caught between a smile and a frown.

“I’m lost,” Steve said unconvincingly.

“Right, right,” Bucky said, “And what’s this?” He pulled a piece of paper out of Steve’s hand and walked off into the shadow between tents with it.

“Ok,” Steve said, “You caught me.”

“Why, Steve?” Bucky asked, “Why do you want to fight in the war so badly? You can make a difference from home. You know that, right?”

“It’s not right,” Steve said, “Not right that people are risking their lives. Yeah, I can stay here. It’s still not fair. I want to be there, helping them.” He stopped talking and swallowed hard. “I want to be there with you.”

That – that broke Bucky’s heart. All these years, he had taken care of Steve. Nursed him when he was sick, gotten him out of fights, let him stay at his house. Now Steve wanted to take care of him.

For the first time, Bucky let himself admit that he loved Steve. Not out loud, but to himself.

“Well,” Bucky said flatly, “You never did back down from a hopeless fight.” There was a long pause.

“Are you scared?” Steve asked. Bucky didn’t say anything, just nodded. Then he looked at Steve. Coward, he thought, about himself.

“Are you?” Bucky asked. Steve grinned.

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

Bucky was overwhelmed with love for Steve in that moment. He reached up and touched Steve’s face.  
He decided to be brave.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Bucky said. Steve’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. He nodded. Bucky leaned down.

It wasn’t an intense kiss, just ever-so-gentle. Bucky pulled away first. Steve stood stock-still and completely shocked. Bucky’s resolve broke.

“I’m- I’m sorry,” he said, “Just forget- I-” He took two stumbling steps backward.

“Bucky, it’s fine,” Steve said, “Just- let’s talk.”

“No, no,” Bucky said, “I’m sorry.”

He was so violently ashamed that he ran away, almost tripping over a guy wire holding a tent up. He ran back to his tent at training camp. He was the only one in it. Far away, he heard what he thought were fireworks from the fair. But then he realized it was thundering, and that it was going to rain. He rolled over in bed and tried to fall asleep. He was almost asleep when he felt a wet, cold tap on his forehead. He opened his eyes.

There was a leak in the goddamn tent, and rainwater was falling right onto his head. He spent a fleeting moment contemplating fixing it, but he just rolled back over and let it rain on him. It didn’t matter.

When he dragged his damp, sleep-deprived body onto the boat the next day, it was almost a relief. He figured that, if he survived the war, Steve would have forgotten by the time he got back.

If he died, he wouldn’t be around to care.


	8. Redress

As strange as it sounded, being at war was a welcome distraction for Bucky. Fighting to survive has a way of taking the mind off of everything else.

And, Bucky found, he was good at it. Better than he ever expected. He’d had an average childhood, with no particular hardship or strife. But war felt like where he belonged. He was a good shot. He held up his unit, made split-second decisions that saved lives. He followed orders when he wanted to, and, when he didn’t, a roguish smile and a positive turnout usually bought him forgiveness. At night, he dropped into bed – or his tent, or a foxhole, or the nearest piece of flat ground – so exhausted to the bone that he didn’t have time to think about life back home.

Bucky was promoted quickly, making Sergeant in what felt like too little time. His unit congratulated him, spent a night buying him drinks and shaking his hand. Bucky wasn’t so sure it was a compliment. Yes, it meant that they chose him for that purpose. They chose him above other people.

But he’d been watching COs get picked off one by one since he arrived. It was always something stupid. A sniper bullet to the head while taking a piss. A bar in town getting bombed at just the wrong moment. Hell, one even drowned. Bucky half-suspected he’d gotten plastered and fallen into the river. What a way to go.

Soon after he was promoted, Bucky got posted to a new assignment in Austria. It was a classified op, top-secret, only for those who needed to know. Bucky devoured the information. He and his team would be attacking a HYDRA base. It doubled as a weapons development facility. That’s what he got from his commanding officers. That, and all the technical information. There were coordinates, measurements, half-finished blueprints scrawled on bloodstained maps.

He heard a different story from the other soldiers in the area. Bucky had always been of the opinion that, the more people you ask, the closer you get to the truth. And, if the generals gave him the technical readout, his fellow soldiers wrote a horror story between the lines.

“The place is a bottomless pit,” one said, over a warm beer in a bombed-out bar, “It swallows people up. They go in and never come out. Not even the bodies.”

“How many men has he sent?” Bucky asked.

“Gotta be at least two hundred,” another soldier chimed in. Bucky took a sip of his beer to conceal his surprise. He set the empty bottle down on the table with an audible clunk.

“Why do they think this time will be different?” Bucky asked. The first soldier laughed.

“Oh, they don’t. They have to keep throwing people at it. Otherwise Washington throws a shit fit.”

The second soldier laughed. “Maybe they think that once enough bodies pile up they can climb them to get over the wall.”

Bucky heard a bottle break, and realized a half second later that it was his. He’d flinched and knocked it off the table. The other two men were so drunk that they didn’t notice. He stood abruptly and walked out, back to his tent, in the dark. When he got there, he pored over the blueprints by lamplight. It was hours until the attack, and he still had no clue what he was going to do.

By that time the next day, he was in a HYDRA cell.

***

They gave him something. Never explained what it was. Bucky was on a need-to-know basis. They barked orders at him in English, and everything else was in German. The drug hit fast, and hard. He didn’t know which way was up, didn’t know where or even who he was.

It was a little like now.

The present burned and distorted like a film reel on fire, scenes from his past flashing by at lightning speed. Blink. He was under fire. Blink. In a foxhole. Blink. Kissing Steve in the darkness between tents. Blink. They were holding hands on the floor of a Brooklyn apartment. When they said your life flashed before your eyes, Bucky never realized it went backwards.

Blink. Steve was standing over him.

He was still hallucinating. It was Steve, but he wasn’t right – too tall, too large. Then he said “Bucky, it’s me.” Suddenly, things were very quiet. His limbs didn’t come back – not right away – but there was Steve, right in front of him.

He had to know everything, right away. But Steve had other things on his mind – namely, escaping the base they were in. He followed him, limbs like rubber, heart racing like it never did in battle. This was different. This was Steve. He watched it all unfold. Explosions, fire, a man with no face, but still was in disbelief about Steve, here, now, real.

And then they were free.

***

He needed to know everything. How Steve had fooled the enlistment agents, become Captain America. There was a good amount of teasing about Steve the showgirl, touring the USA, punching Hitler. It was like old times.

It took days for them to get back to base. They slept in foxholes and bombed-out buildings, sometimes got fed by grateful locals, sometimes got drunk on their dime. It was like old times. When Bucky caught Steve looking at him strangely, he assumed Steve was just grateful he was alive.

Four hundred men were rescued. It was nothing short of a miracle. When Steve asked him and the rest of the Howling Commandos to join him, he answered before even thinking. Yes. To the end of the line.

They celebrated on Steve’s tab. The beer must have been weak, because he wasn’t getting drunk near as fast as he usually did. It didn’t really matter, though; the atmosphere was jubilant. There was a piano playing, the men were singing.

Then Agent Carter walked in. There was a familiar sinking in the pit of Bucky’s stomach, a roaring in his ears. He stared at Steve, and Steve was looking at her. She was making some snarky comment about the music.

“What,” he said, “You don’t like music?”

“I do, actually,” she replied, “I might even, when this is all over, go dancing.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

It wasn’t a real request. Suddenly he was back in New York City, on a fake double date, puffing himself up to look bigger than he was. His insides were rolling sick, and it wasn’t the beer. It was Steve’s face. Steve’s eyes, all over her in that tight red dress, Steve’s cool comments – so unlike him. He was invisible.

God, he was so fucking stupid. As if one miracle followed another like thunder followed lightning. As if, because he was alive, and Steve was alive, and they were together… this could work. He felt like he could cry. Instead, he made a sarcastic comment, settled into the second-best he’d always lived in.

Even as the Winter Soldier, red dresses put the taste of stale beer in his mouth. He thought it was some assassination memory. Somehow this was worse.


	9. Holy Ground

Certain of Bucky’s memories came easier than others. He found pain, when he looked, to be readily available. Other memories – ones of joy, of pleasure, of comfort – did not reappear as easily.

He became more reckless. He spent hours poring over Internet pages, newspapers, anything, trying to dredge up memories. Sometimes the memories were benign, domestic. Others had him waking up in a cold sweat, only to bolt to his grubby bathroom and be sick. He felt filthy, like the blood would never quite leave his hands.

On impulse, one day, he bought a train ticket to France. He knew it was a bad idea before he did it. But the old newspapers and websites weren’t giving him anything anymore. He was determined to pull all of it up, reveal everything about who he was. So he read up on the Howling Commandos – where they were stationed, where they worked – and got on a train.

He ended up in a provincial little town. It didn’t look like much, but his heart started racing as soon as he got off the train. The sky rumbled faintly, threatening rain, but that didn’t bother him. He booked himself into a hostel and, once he knew he had a place to retreat to, set out along the road.

The town still had the scars of war on it. Stone buildings were patched in places with new brick; strange furrows and sinkholes pocked the fields, even covered in wildflowers. He’d read that there were still shells in the ground in a lot of these places. That every once in a while a construction project found a body. It began to sprinkle rain, and the sound of raindrops on cobblestones pushed him along. He wasn’t really paying attention, just wandering.

He got to a spot where a paving stone was missing, almost tripped, stopped. He frowned. He could have sworn the sky got darker the moment he looked up. The streets were deserted. The rain had begun in earnest, and nobody wanted to be outside.

He was standing in front of a church. It, too, had seen the war. Some of its stained glass looked original, but most of the windows were new. The masonry was original, but some of the stones were cracked, likely from heat. He had to go inside.

The front door creaked audibly. The church was faintly lit inside, and vacant, as well. A pounding began in the back of his head, accompanied by a strange feeling in his stomach. There was a set of stone steps leading up to the altar. They were worn from centuries of use. Every step closer to the sanctuary made the roaring in his ears louder.

“Bonjour,” he heard, and jerked his head up. There was a priest standing in the corner.

“Vous cherchez quelque chose?” the priest asked. Bucky shook his head stiffly. The priest stepped toward him, and that was too much. He ran out of the church, out into the rain, which was coming down in sheets. He ducked into a back alley, collapsed against the wall, and remembered.

***

Life with the Howling Commandos was good. Sure, it was still war, and war was hell. But Bucky got to spend every day fighting for his country with the best of the best. And he got to spend it with Steve.

Bucky remembered, of course, the kiss, before he left and everything changed. He wasn’t foolish enough to think that things were different now. He fell into the practiced pattern he’d occupied before the war. Spending time with Steve, orbiting. Getting close, but not close enough for him to suspect. Drinking in Steve’s image, battle-bloodied or glowing in the lantern-light. Getting drunk and telling himself that this time the liquid courage would work. That he’d be brave enough to admit everything.

That last was proving a little more difficult these days. He was never really sure what HYDRA did to him, back when he was captured. Something about him was changing, though. It was hard to get drunk. A little buzzed, sure, but never the singing, dancing, blacking-out drunk he could get before. That wasn’t the only thing. He found he was hungry all the time, and rations weren’t cutting it. He barely slept. In battle, time seemed slower than it used to be. He had more time to react.

Steve couldn’t get drunk either. Side effect of the serum. Not that he hadn’t tried. One night the boys made him a bet, asked the barmaid for the strongest liquor she had, and watched him down three bottles, to no avail. It meant there were a lot of evenings where Steve and Bucky sat in dark pubs, the only two left sober. It was entertaining, in the beginning. But after a while, watching their friends spill drinks and embarrass themselves in front of local girls got a little old. When this happened, Steve and Bucky retreated to camp. Bucky assumed Steve slept. He laid awake.

That night was similar. The inside of the bar was hot, and loud, and smelled like sweat and spilled drinks. Steve and Bucky made eye contact, near midnight, and the understanding passed between them that it was time to leave. They pushed their way through the slouching crowd to the door.

It was hotter than Bucky expected outside, and wet. A few soldiers were standing under the awning at the bar’s entrance, smoking and staring at the sky.

“Is it raining?” Steve asked.

“Was a couple seconds ago,” one replied, “Reckon it will start again soon.”

A rumble of thunder passed overhead.

“Good thing we’re not in tents,” another man commented, “Mine’s got a hole in it size of a dinner plate.”

Steve and Bucky set out back to the inn they’d commandeered. It was dark; the town was mostly evacuated. Flashes of lightning lit the landscape now and then. Bombed-out buildings yawned in the light, broken glass glittering, beams jutting like broken bones to the sky. Steve and Bucky were alone. Most of the men were back at the bar. The few with common sense were already in bed.

“We’re moving out tomorrow,” Steve said, barely audible over a roll of thunder.

“That right?” Bucky asked, “Where we going now?”

“I’m not sure,” Steve replied, “Command is fighting over which of the HYDRA bases needs to go down next. I expect they’ll wake me up at dawn to break the tie.”

“Those bastards can barely-”

With a great thunderclap, the sky broke open. It was pouring, rain coming down in buckets.

“Shit,” Bucky said.

“Over here,” Steve said. A flash of lightning illuminated the empty shell of a church. They both ran for it. Through wooden doors knocked askew, skirting puddles where the roof had fallen in. The roof was intact by the altar, and they ran there, laughing. Steve took a seat on the stone steps. They were worn in places, stone smoothed out by years of footsteps. Bucky looked out through one of the windows at the rain drenching the fields.

“Remember when we were kids,” Steve said, “And I stayed the night at your apartment during a thunderstorm?”

“Yeah,” Bucky said, around the lump in his throat.

“You taught me how to tell how far away a storm was.”

“I thought you taught me,” Bucky said back, over his shoulder. There was a pause, broken by the heartbeat thrum of rain on the roof.

“Are we going to talk about it?” Steve asked.

“Talk about what?” Bucky asked. He wasn’t facing Steve. He was still staring out the window.

“You know what,” Steve said.

Bucky froze. Of course. Of course Steve wouldn’t have this conversation in front of the men, where he could be overheard. He was too kind for that, too generous. Steve couldn’t stand to hurt Bucky, even after what Bucky had done. He turned to face Steve.

“What’s there to talk about?” Bucky asked flatly. Off in the distance, thunder growled. Steve stepped toward him.

“Why did you run away?” Steve asked.

“I was… oh, god. I was just afraid. Afraid you’d hate me, afraid someone would see. Afraid of everything. And I ran, and I’m sorry. But it’s over now. Just forget it ever happened.” Bucky met Steve’s gaze. “Are you happy?”

“No,” Steve said. Bucky’s mouth resolved into a flat line and he turned away. Steve touched his arm and guided him back around.

“I want you to do it again,” Steve said, “Do it right, this time. Don’t be afraid.”

Bucky looked very confused. “You..? What?”

“I want you to kiss me, Buck,” Steve said, “It’s the middle of the night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, in the middle of nowhere. We’re safe. We’re alone. And I want you to kiss me.”

Bucky let everything sink in. He wondered if he was dreaming.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky asked.

“I could say the same thing to you,” Steve said.

“You went on dates with girls!” Bucky said, laughing.

“You set me up on dates with girls!” Steve shot back.

“You’re gay, though?” Bucky asked, “Really?”

Steve shrugged. “I like girls, too. But not as much as… not as much as I like you.”

Bucky’s heart warmed. All his fear melted away.

“How do we… how do we do this?” Steve asked.

“Well,” Bucky said, “You asked me to kiss you. Let’s start there.”

Steve wanted this, Bucky could tell. But he was shy, not sure what to do. Bucky stepped forward and ran his hands down Steve’s chest.

“You’re different,” Bucky said. Steve nodded.

“The serum… I’m stronger. I don’t get sick as much anymore. But I’m still me.”

Bucky kissed Steve gently, relishing the feeling of it.

“I know it’s still you,” Bucky said, “You still act like you. You still smell like you.” Bucky knew what Steve smelled like. He’d sweated out a hundred fevers in their shared bed.

There was too much space between them, so Bucky kissed Steve again. This time, he opened his mouth, letting Steve’s tongue explore. Steve groaned and pulled back.

“I’ve always wondered what that would be like,” Steve said, “Kissing you, that is.”

“Wonder no more,” Bucky replied. The thunder growled; closer, now. The men’s kisses continued, growing hotter. Steve moved off of Bucky’s lips and to his neck, and Bucky practically melted.

“How did you know I had a spot there?” Bucky asked, out of breath.

“You sometimes had bruises there, after you’d been out for the night,” Steve said, “God, I hated that. You out with some girl and me alone with my hand.”

“Men. I was out with men,” Bucky said.

“Oh, okay, of course,” Steve said. Then, “You… you slept with men?” Steve asked.

“You slept with women,” Bucky said, “Same difference.”

“I didn’t sleep with anyone,” Steve said. Bucky’s eyes popped.

“You want to fix that?” Bucky asked, trying to be seductive. He reached down and probed the front of Steve’s pants.

“Fuck, yes,” Steve said, “Here? Now?”

The thunder clapped. “No time like the present,” Bucky said. Steve nodded. He guided Steve over to the sanctuary until he sat, hard, on the steps up to the altar. Bucky climbed into his lap.

“Wait,” Steve said.

“What’s up, Stevie?” Bucky asked.

“We’re in a church,” Steve said, “This building used to be a church.”

“Used to be,” Bucky said.

“Holy ground is holy ground,” Steve said.

“I thought you quit the church,” Bucky said.

“I don’t know,” Steve said. He seemed conflicted.

“The whole world is at war. Good people are being killed by the day. The people who worship here had to run away with their martyr’s bones. God’s dead, Steve. And people will still call what we’re about to do a sin. But if you don’t want to fuck me in a dead man’s house, that’s fine.” A passion blazed in Bucky’s eyes, and in Steve’s.

“I think I’ve waited long enough,” Steve said. He reached up and took Bucky’s head in his hands, kissing him deeply.

_Finally._


	10. One One Thousand

Bucky wanted his hands on every part of Steve he could reach. They were in uniform, both of them, but that wouldn’t be a problem for long. Bucky pulled at Steve’s shirt and Steve obliged, his hands flying to the buttons.

“God, why are there so many buttons?” Steve complained. Bucky laughed.

“I don’t think they designed the uniforms with this situation in mind,” he said. Soon enough, they were both shirtless, Bucky squirming in Steve’s lap. They managed to brush their cocks together through their pants and Steve hissed.

“I’m getting there, punk,” Bucky said. He started kissing the corner of Steve’s jaw and began moving down his neck, down his chest. He found Steve’s nipple and licked it, then brushed it with his thumb. Steve groaned and bucked up into him.

“This is even better than I imagined,” Steve said idly.

“Pants off,” Bucky said.

“Yes,” Steve replied. He slipped out of his pants and underwear. “Do you want me to turn over?” Steve asked.

“Wha-?” Bucky asked, “Oh, no, sorry. I can’t fuck you like that, Steve, not today.”

“Why not?” Steve asked.

“Because we don’t have any Vaseline, and this is your first time, and I don’t want it to hurt. I probably wouldn’t be able to get into you. Another time.”

Steve nodded. Bucky knelt between his legs.

“I can still suck you off, though,” Bucky said. Steve’s eyes were glassy and his lips plump, and he was unable to do much more than nod. Bucky ran his hands along Steve’s legs, digging his thumbs in. Then Bucky kissed Steve’s hip and the inside of his thigh, nipping just a touch at the same time a crash of thunder hit.

“Please,” Steve said, and Bucky smiled.

“Please what?” he asked.

“Suck my dick, Buck, seriously, I-”

Steve was cut off abruptly as Bucky swallowed him whole. He moaned, proper and loud, and it shot straight to Bucky’s groin.

Bucky did his best with Steve, he really did. But Steve was big – probably bigger than his pre-serum self. Bucky fastened his hands around the base of Steve’s dick and focused on his head, darting his tongue over and around, pushing into the slit and back out. Steve was clearly enjoying it a lot, and he was noisy about it, which drove Bucky crazy.

At one point, on the edge of losing control, Steve thrust forward into Bucky’s mouth. Bucky nearly choked. He popped his mouth off of Steve.

“Try not to do that,” Bucky said placatingly.

“Sorry, sorry!” Steve said, “It just- it feels so good. You feel so good. I’m so close, I…”

“Say my name,” Bucky said, returning to his work. As soon as his mouth was on Steve again, Steve started babbling.

“Bucky, Bucky, oh god.” Bucky licked into his slit again. “Do that again, please, don’t stop. Buck, oh, fuck, I’m so close.” Steve’s hands flew to Bucky’s hair, tugging lightly. “Bucky, _fuck_.”

Bucky didn’t have a lot of warning. He made a split-second decision to hang on and swallow, and then Steve came. Bucky tried to swallow, but it was a _lot_ , and he was taken aback. Some dribbled down his chin and onto his bare chest. Steve was leaning back, chest heaving. Bucky tapped his hip and he sat up and looked at Bucky.

“Oh, man, did I do that?” Steve asked, reaching for Bucky’s face. Bucky nodded.

“Want to taste?” Bucky asked. Steve contemplated, then nodded. Bucky climbed back into his lap and pulled him into a kiss. Steve licked himself from Bucky’s mouth as Bucky ground down against his leg. Steve’s eyes flew open.

“Of course, of course,” Steve said. He reached into Bucky’s lap and brushed his cock through his pants.

“Ah,” Bucky breathed. The storm seemed to be right overhead, lightning and thunder chorusing together.

“I don’t know if I can…” Steve said, trailing off as Bucky writhed in his lap.

“Anything you can do is fine by me,” Bucky said, “Hell, I might cum in my pants like this.”

“We just had our uniforms washed,” Steve said, “Here, let me.” He undid the zip on the front of Bucky’s pants and took him in hand. Bucky was rock-hard and already leaking.

“Jesus, Steve, just like that,” he said. Steve pumped his cock in slow strokes, and Bucky keened.

“Faster, please,” Bucky said. Steve nodded. He pressed his lips to that spot on Bucky’s neck and brushed his thumb over Bucky’s slit at the same time. Bucky was almost in hysterics.

“Steve, I’ve waited, I’ve wanted- You’re just perfect.” He snapped his hips up into Steve’s hand again and again. “Perfect. Yes. I’m almost there, you’re doing so well.”

Suddenly Bucky was being lifted, fucking _lifted_. He and Steve switched positions, and Steve was between his legs. Before he could figure out what was happening he was in Steve’s mouth.

“Teeth, ahh,” he said. Steve nodded. One long suck, another, and Bucky was gone, shouting into the church rafters. Steve tried to swallow, bless his heart, and choked, coughing and spitting onto the stone floor.

“That bad?” Bucky asked. Steve wiped his mouth and smiled.

“No, just surprising,” Steve said. He lifted himself up until he was next to Bucky, who was lying on the stone steps. He kissed him and then lay down next to him, both men breathing heavily.

***

“Not bad for your first time?” Bucky asked. Steve laughed quietly.

“Couldn’t have been better. It was you.” He paused a moment. “Could you teach me to do that?”

Bucky groaned at the suggestion. “Practice makes perfect,” he said.

“Oh, good.”

They lay in silence for a while, holding each other’s hands, listening to the storm. It seemed to have stalled above them, the lightning making idle threats, thunder responding in kind. Bucky’s thumb traced the veins on the back of Steve’s hand, as if, by knowing them, he could extrapolate a path to Steve’s heart.

“What happens now?” Steve asked. Bucky smiled, and frowned, and smiled again.

“I don’t know,” Bucky said. “This could earn us a ticket back home, you know. Dishonorable discharge. Well, maybe not you. Definitely me.”

“I don’t think I can do this without you, Buck. War – hell, life – it’s not worth it.”

“We don’t have to think about that right now,” Bucky said, “Let’s just… freeze time. Right here. Like tomorrow is never gonna come.”

There was a bright flash, and for a moment, Bucky was back on his bedroom floor. He lay on Steve’s chest and counted, in his mind, _one one thousand._

In a perfect world, the thunder never followed the lightning. Time froze, in a bombed-out church, and Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes lived in _one one thousand_ forever.

***


End file.
